Free Corregidora (Bluestreak) by Gayl Jones Page B

I’m lying. Yes.”
    “What am I doing to you, Ursa?”
    “You fucking me.”
    “I thought you were still afraid of those words.”
    “Didn’t I tell you you taught me what Corregidora taught Great Gram. He taught her to use the kind of words she did. Don’t you remember?”
    “I got a terrible memory. I kept asking you, but you never would tell me … What am I doing?”
    “You fucking me, bastard.”
    I dreamed that my belly was swollen and restless, and I lay without moving, gave birth without struggle, without feeling. But my eyes never turned to my feet. I never saw what squatted between my knees. But I felt the humming and beating of wings and claws in my thighs. And I felt a stiff penis inside me. “Those who have fucked their daughters would not hesitate to fuck their own mothers.” Who are you? Who have I born? His hair was like white wings, and we were united at birth.
    “Who are you?”
    “You don’t even know your own father?”
    “You not my father. I never was one of your women.”
    “Corregidora’s women. Yes, you are.”
    “No!”
    “What did Mutt do to you, baby?”
    “I don’t need your pity.”
    “It looks ugly in there.”
    “It’s no worse than what you did.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Yes, you old bastard.”
    Great Gram, if she were back, what would she say?
    “Be glad he didn’t fuck you.”
    “Oh, but he did. What do you say to me now?”
    “Where’s the next generation?”
    “Hush.”
    I am Ursa Corregidora. I have tears for eyes. I was made to touch my past at an early age. I found it on my mother’s tiddies. In her milk. Let no one pollute my music. I will dig out their temples. I will pluck out their eyes.
    “What is it?”
    “What? I’m all right.”
    “You weren’t sleeping well again.”
    “I’m all right. Is it morning?”
    “Almost.”
    “You said they never told you anything about your past. I mean theirs. That’s the same as yours.”
    “Naw. You know, they be some things that pass down. But they didn’t just sit me down and talk about it. But they be stories. Like, you know, about my grandmother. I took after Papa though, and the daughter that came out dark.”
    “Was she your mama?” I asked.
    “Naw, my mama was the one that come out light.”
    “Aw. What else do you know?”
    “Well, I know that they taught Papa how to be a blacksmith doing slavery, and when the slavery was over, he went on being a blacksmith, and then everytime he saved up some money, he’d buy a little taste of land, so the generations after him would always have land to live on. But it didn’t turn out that way.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, they crooked up there. When Mama went into the courthouse to claim the land, somebody had tore one of the pages out the book. Tha’s one reason I got away from up there. Aw, they let her keep the little piece of land where the house is, and I send her money every chance I get. But the rest of the land. Anyway, it’s …”
    “What?”
    “Nothing. Anyway, they ain’t nothing you can do when they tear the pages out of the book and they ain’t no record of it. They probably burned the pages.”
    “… Naw, I don’t remember when slavery was abolished, cause I was just being born then. Mama do, and sometime it seem like I do too. They signed papers, and there wasn’t all this warring like they had up here. You know, it was what they call pacific. A pacific abolition. And you know, people was celebrating and rejoicing and cheering in the street, white people and black people. And then they called Isabella, that was the princess, they started calling Isabella the Redempt’ress, you know, because she signed the paper with a jeweled pen. And then after that black people could go anywhere they wanted to go, and take up life anyway they wanted to take it up. And then that’s when the officials burned all the papers cause they wanted to play like what had happened before never did happen. But I know it happened, I bear